As I have said from the beginning that this is a place to vent for me. I must have some suppressed anger or something, but here goes. France is pissing me off a bit. To start, there are a lot of dogs in France and from what I have seen, especially in Rennes. I have loved every dog in the world except for one and a half. Kind of a weird number for dogs, but I will explain. My roommate back in college, wow I'm getting old, had the dumbest dog on the planet. I only hated her half of the time because other times she clawed him in the face or snatched his rib eye sandwich out of his hand. So, I only hated her half the time. He had a girl friend who had a dog that was awful. My roommate always had to babysit this dog and I think he even hated it. Most the time it was locked upstairs so it wouldn't eat the chalk off the pool table. Well apparently this dog had diarrhea and managed to spray the place. It smelt so bad that I could not leave my room. I had to crawl out of my window and jump of the roof of the house just to get out of my room. As you might imagine, the smell of dog feces has scared me ever since. Well there are landmines everywhere and I swear I am the only one who steps in them. There have been many days where I am scraping poo off my shoes on a curb or trying to use the cobblestone streets as a cleaning tool. Saturday night I stepped in the steamiest pile of dog crap known to man. I instantly felt the squish and went into instant rage. Now the worst part is that I somehow managed to get some on my finger. I am not going to explain the events that transpired to let this happen, but, to make me look less stupid, I talked Ryan into smelling my finger to confirm that it was indeed dog poop. I saw a few looks on the bus when you see a grown man smelling another mans finger. I don't consider myself grown, because miracles do happen and I may grow some more when I reach 30. Moral of the story is if you ever travel to France, watch your feet. You have no idea what you might step in. Alright I will get on to the rest of my venting now.
I come from Iowa. We have been able to drive with our parents since we were 14, get our school permits at 14 1/2, and Ben and I drove to wall-mart in Iowa Falls at age 13. So at age 23, I have been driving for the better part of the decade. How many speeding tickets have I gotten in all that time in the United States. Zero, zilch, none, nada, nil, and for the tennis fans love. That's not the case in France. I drove to the Netherlands last semester and and got two of them. We saw the cameras flash and just shook our heads. At least this last trip, as was documented in the last post could surely not have anymore happen to it, such as a thing like speeding tickets...
Ryan came in today with a stack of mail. He was excited, he likes mail. I don't like it because in past experiences only bad things are sent to me in mail. Except for your packages mom. I feel much safer with an email. He noted that Victor got quite a bit of mail. Well good for him, I hope something nice is sent to him. Find out later, that it wasn't. Those bastards sent us with two more speeding tickets. TWO MORE! I was barely even speeding. They were for a few KM's over and the highest one was the equivalent of going about 5 miles an hour over. Let me ask you this. How many times do you drive under 5 mph's over the speed limit. Absolute ludicrous. And no, for some of the younger viewers it is not the rapper Ludacris. He is becoming a better actor since his music fizzled, but that's not the point. I am tired of these French government thieves catching me with cameras going over 3 km. There police from what I have seen only work 9-5, that's including their 3 hour lunch, and definitely not on Sundays. They were no help when we were on the side of the road in the rain and I had to relieve myself. Absolute bullshit. Excuse my French, no pun intended. Well I can now see this is unhealthy so I will discuss something gross that my roommate victor and myself willing did.
I will keep this segment short because I want to discuss cheese, but we went to the store the other day and we noticed a very disgusting creature sitting on ice. It looked like an eel, but who knows what it was. Ryan thinks I am crazy for eating vegetables so he said even I wouldn't eat that. I have to stop this, I am 23, but the only thing that popped into my head was challenge accepted. I bought it and it was stinking up the fridge and was a few days past the date to consume so it needed to be done. We bet the 1.66 that it cost, but Ryan being generous said that I only had to take 3 bites and he would buy me a Heineken at the bar next weekend. Not my favorite beer by any means, but the cheapest we can find here. I didn't want to fry it and watch it cook and psyche myself out so I baked it and threw some carrots around it. This thing stunk up the entire house, but thankfully Victor loves garlic and applied half a bottle to the meat he was frying. I told him if a vampire ever bit him, the vampire would drop dead. I'm sort of an expert, I lived with my parents this summer and resorted to watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Netflix to pass the time when my only friends Gus and Gidget were sleeping. Well it was cooked as much as it could be so I cut into it. I took comparative anatomy in high school so I was quickly able to identify the kidneys and the liver. This animal was one of those things that suck things off the bottom or something and I think I dissected something similar. Well, I didn't have a scalpel and we only had 1 fork clean so I used that as my utensil. Well I said it was gross, but they have no idea. It really tasted like formaldehyde. Wow, you might be impressed, I spelled that without spell check. It really tasted like salt water, dirt, and something my pallets have never experienced and I hope they never do again. It was atrocious. I threw the rest away in the trash. Bad idea. The apartment smelled like that until I took the trash out in the late afternoon. Well I am stupid, but I get a free beer, but now I will discuss my friend tending to rotten dairy products.
Might be a surprise to some of you, but our kitchen was gross. We had put it off for some time now and candles and glade were not doing the trick. A few weeks ago, we had a Mexican themed party. My roommate hails from Mexico and some other Mexican students and he cooked some dishes for us to enjoy. It was amazing. They did a fantastic job. Good work Victor and company. This is honestly the first time that I have been cooked for since I have been here. Might be hard to believe, but any dinner we have had, I have had a major part in the cooking. Yeah ladies, I make a mean apple crisp. Our apartment has kind of turned into a place to party on occasion. Nothing different from some of my other residences in the past, but these parties are different. I feel fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be a co-host of a party where there are more than 12 different nationalities in our small apartment. It really is amazing. It is really cool to meet so many new people from different backgrounds and cultures. I honestly think I would never have the chance to experience something like this and am very grateful for this. Hey, people take out loans to buy cars and houses they don't need. I have taken out student loans to better myself and see a part of the world I may never have the chance to again. This party was no exception, and although I love being immersed in other cultures I did have my computer propped up streaming the NFL combine, just in case people were interested, but the party was a success.
The problem though, this happened weeks ago, and we had yet to clean up. Last night we started. My roommates graciously cleaned up all the pretzels that I had spilled on the floor. Grandpa, I got your love for pretzels, but I still will never watch the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade. I stated with with dishes. I cranked up the DMX, did a little barking, and went to town on about every plate and pot we have. Here is my Good housekeeping tip for the week: Listen to DMX if you don't have a dishwasher. It makes it much more enjoyable. Well I tackled a majority of the dishes, but my hands were looking like the California raisins so I gave up and told Victor there was no way in hell I was touching this pot of melted cheese nearing a month old.
Today, when Victor got back from classes and ate some dinner, he tackled the Cheese, its fromage in French. It was so disgusting. We all left the kitchen because we were gagging. I set a plate on top a week or so ago to mask the smell so there were some odors that were brewing in there. I wanted to be there for him, I really did, but I could not take it. I told Victor I want give you moral support buddy, but it is too much to handle. I closed the kitchen door, but kept it open ajar and watched him gag and scrape this aging cheese out of the pot. My shirt was over my nose, but it still didn't help. People eat aged cheese, but I think this was dead cheese. Congrats go out to my boy Victor, he accomplished the feat. I would not wish this upon my enemies. You did well young grasshopper. That it is it until my normal PS, but until something happens, which usually does, Au Revoir.
Ps---> I can't believe Emma is not giving it up to John Stamos. That's "Uncle Jesse!" Even I would. My predictions are that Carl will get with Ms. Holiday and then Emma and Will are going to seal the deal. What am I saying. I need Facebook and Twitter back.
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